7 comments on “Doing a good job?”

Delighted to hear the job with Dying Matters is going so well. The directory of local services sounds such an exciting and innovative project and so needed. Many current web directories can come across as quite fragmented with missing links, were as if you go on the persons journey in the last year of life it is such an eclectic mix of services and information they may access for a whole host of reasons.

As part of your directory compilation if there comes a point were you are wishing to go out to consultation for others views on whether additional areas of resources though not specific local agencies might be of use to be considered for addition then the Natural Death Centre would be delighted to offer its services. Feel free to email me if of use in the future.

I joined the Dying Matters team 6 weeks ago to develop a directory of local services for people in the last 12 months of life, their carers and local professionals. I have been extremely impressed with the quality and commitment of the staff team who are a seriously talented group of people.

Though there is certainly a difference in approach between Dying Matters and my own Death Cafe project, I am really glad to see more people working to make talking about dying normal.

It’s good to see Dying Matters is being as topical as ever. The Natural Death Centre charity has been an active member since its origins. It was so welcome to see the National Council for Palliative Care respond so creatively to the End of Life Care Strategy (Department of Health 2008) by initiating and nurturing Dying Matters.

Promoting compassionate communities and so a public health approaches to dying and death is most welcome and is in line with NDCs practise for over twenty years. The mode of dying in the UK is changing; people are living with life threatening illnesses for many years. Acute health care frameworks can be reductionist and health care tends to focus on the individual. Compassionate communities promote a shift towards ‘community’ in that the construct of a good death to become a social and collective issue.

A small group of us here in York wanted to promote ‘dying matters week’ back in may…. didn’t get much support from the organisation. I wanted to try to put a display in the library and they produce lots of lovely leaflets but you have to buy them and we just didn’t have any budget.
They have a facebook page which I get lots of updates from and from that it sounds like they are doing good work, perhaps just with limited staff and limited budgets.

Kathryn Edwards

I was also a bit stumped when faced with these questions. They gave me the idea to call them to have a chat about how could support me as I try to get the word out about the work of Community Funeral Advisers. Your post has reminded me to call them today.